I totally disagree. Music now does not sound clean, it sounds harsh as hell, and the way autotune is used is not to clean up the vocals its to add extra sharpness to the end which itself is harsh. There's tons of older recordings that sound waaaaaaaaaay better than shit produced today.
And a lot of live performances now feature just as much tuning as the album does. That's even ignoring if they lay the studio over the speakers. Live (with some exceptions) sounds like ass because its just not an optimal audio setup from a listening standpoint, but that's not the point of going to a live performance. Some bands put in the extra it needs to make it sound a lot better, and they deserve praise for that, but live isn't about fidelity. Of course it also depends on the actual ability of the performers (even if they have colds or strained/overworked their vocal chords or just playing sloppy), and there's plenty of no talent assclowns now.
A lot of the reason people lock onto certain music is because its what they listened to during their formative years, its not about how it actually sounds. There's a bunch of music I listened to when I was younger that I can't stand now.
It is absolutely possible to objectively consider sound and music. This is something that's getting really annoying. You can subjectively like different things but you can also objectively consider them. Music and sound is every bit as objective as it is subjective. But by just going "well its just taste" you just limit what you could get. A lot of music now actually could sound better with less work, but because they do shit like ridiculous amounts of dynamic range compression coupled with boosting the mastering level and other things that actually reduce quality, you end up with worse sounding music.
Honestly, I don't know how younger people listen to a lot of the modern pop/rap/rock music that they inject a bunch of really irritating electronic sounds (autotune being a big one). I would think the high frequencies and ringing and shit would bother their ears more. But then I don't think they even realize it. A lot of them listen to music on stuff that makes pretty much everything sound bad so they can't even really discern much difference. Its sad too, because it doesn't take audiosnobbery and audiophile BS, most of the time they could get better sound for equal or less money.